In 1936, Samuel Steward was teaching English and creative writing at Washington State University when his first novel, "Angels on the Bough," was published by Caxton Press of Caldwell, Idaho. The book got good reviews, especially from The New York Times, and Steward sent it to his friend Gertrude Stein, who wrote back that "I like it and it did something to me."

The incident is a minor one in Steward's unbelievable life but is illustrative of several themes: He was a talented novelist with famous friends, he was sexually open in a repressive era, and he continually ran into trouble with authority. Besides his career as an academic, Steward was a pioneering tattoo artist who inked the Hell's Angels (as "Doc" Sparrow), the author of a groundbreaking series of gay pornographic novels (as Phil Andros), and a key research subject for Alfred C. Kinsey.

Steward, among many other things, kept a detailed record of his sex life for 50 years. (His journal entries include a number of famous men, including Thornton Wilder, Rudolph Valentino, and a young Rock Hudson.) Kinsey, the author of two groundbreaking studies on human sexuality, was fascinated by Steward, who in turn gave Kinsey access to his journals and other items.

"Kinsey was delighted with him in many ways and thought Steward was a very special person," Spring said. "Kinsey entered Steward's life at a period when his self-esteem was low. He was basically going from literature to the tattoo parlor. He really thought he was contributing to a higher cause by helping Kinsey and that (Kinsey) was moving society toward sexual enlightenment and homosexual liberation."

Spring was calling from Indiana University, where he was lecturing as part of the Kinsey Institute's "Sexploration Week." Spring had just finished speaking on the challenges of writing a biography that contained highly sexual material. And what are those challenges?

"The biggest challenge is finding the right tone," Spring said. "A lot of this material isn't just highly sexual but deals with the kind of things we don't talk about in polite society. Some people aren't just not interested but are repelled. I had to treat this like a literary biography."

"Secret Historian" was rejected by a number of publishers before Farrar, Straus and Giroux accepted it. Spring's first draft was 1,600 pages; it took him a "very hard" year to cut the book to 600 pages. He said its being named a National Book Award finalist was a great honor and "a great step forward" in the acknowledgment that gay and sexual subjects are worthy of serious research.

Spring will speak at a Publishers Lunch event at 12 p.m. on Nov. 11, with a menu developed by Jeremy Larter from Alice Toklas' cookbook. A special edition of letters from Steward to Stein and Toklas will be available, with an introduction by Spring and an afterword by Matthew Stadler. Tickets are $30 and are available through publicationstudio.biz/events.